{"id":1854,"date":"2021-05-20T16:24:27","date_gmt":"2021-05-20T13:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/?p=1854"},"modified":"2021-05-20T16:45:56","modified_gmt":"2021-05-20T13:45:56","slug":"smtp-ports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/smtp-ports\/","title":{"rendered":"SMTP Ports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the <\/span><b>standard for handling email transmission<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It has been around since the <\/span><b>1970s<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and modern email clients continue to use it for processing outgoing communication.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SMTP can work on four networking ports: <\/span><b>port 25<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><b>port 465<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><b>port 587<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and <\/span><b>port 2525<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Let&#8217;s see what the difference between them is.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Differences between networking ports\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n<h3><b>Port 25<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When the protocol was first released, port 25 was assigned to it, and it continues to be recognized as the <\/span><b>default option for establishing SMTP connections.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> However, using it to connect your email client to your mail server is not advisable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because port 25 is the default SMTP port, it has<\/span><b> historically served as the starting point for many spam campaigns<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> launched by compromised computers and servers. To limit the number of unsolicited messages, many ISPs and hosting providers block connections on port 25.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a result, <\/span><b>setting up your client to work<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with it might not be possible at all. Even if it is, the connection you establish through it will not be encrypted, meaning<\/span><b> all the data will be transmitted in plaintext<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and will be vulnerable to eavesdropping.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Port 465<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Port 465 was assigned by <\/span><b>the Internet Assigned Number Authority<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (IANA) as the default port for a more secure version of SMTP called <\/span><b>SMTPS.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> SMTPS uses <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/ssl-certificates.html\"><b>Secure Socket Layer<\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (SSL) to encrypt the communication flowing between the client application and the mail server.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By setting up your <\/span><b>mail client to connect to the server via port 465<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, you can ensure that your email communication will be protected. The port has since been assigned a different function, but it <\/span><b>continues to be used by many hosting providers <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">as the default SMTP-over-SSL solution.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Port 587<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Port 587&#8217;s job is to<\/span><b> replace port 465 as the default port for secure SMTP connections. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Modern email applications recognize it, and it&#8217;s accepted by most email delivery services. In combination with a <\/span><b>TLS <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Transport Layer Security) connection, port 587 is a secure vehicle for<\/span><b> processing email communication.<\/b><\/p>\n<h3><b>Port 2525<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Port 2525 is not recognized as an <\/span><b>official SMTP port.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> However, it is widely acknowledged as an alternative to ports 465 and 587. Unless it&#8217;s blocked by an upstream provider, you should be able to use port 2525 with a TLS connection to <\/span><b>manage your emails securely.<\/b><\/p>\n<h2><b>Which port should I use?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><b>ScalaHosting customers<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> can find all the information they need to set up a connection to their email account (including the SMTP server and the port) in the Welcome Email they receive upon signing up. A copy of it is available in the <\/span><b>My Details<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> &gt; <\/span><b>Email History <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">section of their<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/my.scalahosting.com\/\"><b>Client Area<\/b><\/a><b>.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Feel free to<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/contact-us.html\"><b>contact<\/b><\/a> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">our technical support specialists if you have any further questions.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the standard for handling email transmission. It has been around since the 1970s, and modern email clients continue to use it for processing outgoing communication. SMTP can work on four networking ports: port 25, port 465, port 587, and port 2525. Let&#8217;s see what the difference between them is. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-email-hosting"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1855,"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854\/revisions\/1855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}